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What’s happened… I fucked up college, I’m on anti-depressents (which are making a lot of difference really, I’m not half as OCD or panicky or frustrated as I was…)

Done most of my Christmas shopping, just need to ship out a couple of things to people and have a few new things arrive. We have a real tree this year, I carried it home on the bus and everything. Terence will be home for Christmas too so we have to make an effort! (But I wanted the real tree!)

I got a lovely box of stuff from Pavili… If you’re reading this, thankyou, you need to go on MSN more so I can thank you proper!

Got the book and the glow stars from you too, thanks :p They’ve been put under the tree.

Bought some presents for the kids next door :3 I hope they like them, some chocolate, some bits and pieces, and some of these bath beans. They love anything you give them, I gave one of them a peanut in it’s shell once and they had to run off to show their mother. I think we’re also compensating for the fact cousin is such a pain in the arse to buy for, he didn’t even like the bath goo last year, he said it was disgusting, he didn’t like the farting goo I got him either, wouldn’t go near it, and his mum played with the plasticine more than he did. :( The year before he said the lego helicopter was “boring” and that he didn’t want it. I kept it and built it myself… He said the real stethoscope was boring too… It’s hard to know what to get!

Oh well, nevermind… We got him some dinosaur stuff and if he doesn’t like it then tough shit.

New years resolution is to get back into this I suppose, felt more, uh, give up chocolate again? That last one after Christmas, obviously.

Here, I felted some ornaments for the Christmas tree. Have all the other random pictures off my phone/camera too.

Set up the camera in the garden and filmed them for half an hour, nothing major happens but it’s a nice record of them. Do you think mother is getting bored of them yet? (I honestly don’t expect anyone to watch that whole thing)

Getting a fence built in the garden to keep the chickens in, unrelated to the one dying. She’d been visibly ill for a week or so, but I think she’d really been sick longer. Took her to the vet and he thought it was flystrike, but I think that was just a symptom, not the cause. I swear it wasn’t there that morning and once he’d cleaned it it never came back.

Come November we’re gonna buy some rose bushes, and maybe the grass will grow back. Bought a greenhouse but I’ve been very slow putting it together.

The Humble Bundle 3 is giving away a minecraft trial, so I’ve been trying to get Terence into it. Took an hour or so of coaching him over steam, but I’ve managed to get him walking and jumping and I think he broke a block last night! Gettin’ there. It’s worth it just for the minecraft trial, if you’ve never played it.

Took the cooker hood apart earlier. About a year after we got it it started making this terrible noise when switched on so we just stopped using it, I took it apart earlier out of curiosity and it turned out a wire inside had just fallen down into the fan, so that’s fixed! Also, “erase away magic sponges” or whatever they’re called really are magic, they even managed to make the kettle shiny, not even a brillo pad could do that.

End of year has been kinda hectic, I didn’t get everything done in time but they’re still letting me go on to next year, so that’s a relief. We’re gonna do CNC and Welding at last!

Ended up sleeping in until 12 today, haven’t been sleeping much recently so that was nice. Somebody’s offered us more chickens and another coop, he was supposed to phone back but never did so who knows. RSPCA still has our number it seems.

Watching the last NASA shuttle launch (thanks Kirrus) which is pretty interestering.

Knowing I’m not going to fail the course is a huge relief, only annoying thing is I’d discovered an amazing grocers just outside college, which did the best fruit I’ve ever taken and now I can’t go back until September! I made some lovely strawberry jam, gave some to granddad, and was gonna go back and buy gooseberries but never got a chance… Also I’d gotten used to having a bacon sandwich and coffee from Greggs every morning!

I got a phone! Quidco was having a deal, free android phone, £5/month for the first 12 months then £10/month and £80 cashback after a couple of months, so I went for it. Had to do it on mums account because I failed the credit check (due to having never had credit)

I bought a whittling knife and made some cool things out of wood, the website looked kinda rough, but they managed to deliver it for the next day, which was pretty impressive.

We started digging out a dining hall, never before have I seen so much raw gold, they will spak of this in the legends…

I have claimed four of the new migrants (March, May, June and July) and an empty farm slot to train them in. A few beds and it makes an adequate barracks for now. If I’m stuck here then I want to have some defense at least, the wide open gate isn’t resting my fears at all and all my shouting about making a gate seems to have gone unheard.

Autumn has come.
The dogs are breeding like cats, Friday states he wants us to butcher all the males, but I say we keep them for war, right now no decision has been made and they’ve all been let live in peace.

The dining room is finished and we’ve started to furnish it, just a couple of tables and chairs so far but it’s looking pretty good for a lowly lit cavern, the gold in the floor really sparkles. I’m trying to convince Saturday and Thursday to dig a second level for it and I think they’re actually gonna do it.

Idiots! This should be entertaining.

Talking politics for a while, one of the new migrants heard of our retirement plans, and they want in. They figure they’re gonna have as much of a hand in founding this place as we are (Tell that to Thursday and Saturday, they dug just about all of it!) so they want bedrooms and retirement too. We said fine, but if the next lot asks I swear I’ll spear the lot of them.

Speak of the devil… There’s only four of them, so they named themselves after card-suits. Club, Diamond, Heart and Spade. Spade and Club have, ironically, been drafted for my little military unit due to their surprisingly reasonble fighting skills. (Guess what they were kicked out for!) and Diamond and Heart have been set to building a new outer-wall.

I’m going to set them on some badgers, see how it goes. Shouldn’t be too hard a fight, and we could do with some fresh meat.

Several Hours Later
Three of the beasts down, with no injuries or losses, not a bad days work! June swears she saw a wild panda, and now that I look I notice there’s more bamboo around here than normal, but I don’t think we’re up to dealing with that yet.

Late Autumn

A caravan is here! I think we shall order more weapons! I’m liking the look of the axe their guard is carrying. Monday has assigned himself trade minister, and I can’t hear any arguements, mainly because we have nothing yet to trade, gold nuggets are valubable, but we don’t want to advertise that while we lack a good defense force, and they’re worth more smelted anyway.

We found another gold veign while digging out the upper dining room, this place is a dwarf heaven to be sure…

Winter is upon you.
A section of the dining room ceiling collapsed, Saturday fell through and was stunned, but otherwise unhurt, those idiots need to be more careful in future!

Mid Winter
Life proceeds as normal. The upper story of the dining room is complete, they added walkways so we could access the gold more easily, but they can be easily carved out in the future, and rumors are that Sunday is producing masterful chairs and tables for the dining room. I wonder where I’d be now if I’d stuck with my carpentry… Maybe when I hit retirement I’ll get to find out.

Late WinterWe’ve struck yet another gold vein and dug some rough workshops around the edge of the upper dining hall. They were originally going to be bedrooms, but plans change, they’re in a good location. I’m going to put this journal down for now and focus on training my forces. Hard to believe we’ve been here almost a year…

Not done much lately, college and home. Been trying to tidy up more and resisting the urge to spend $120 on a fountain pen.

If I re-arrange my bedroom, stick the bed in the middle instead of against the wall, I should have less floorspace but more room for bookshelves! It would be nice… Think we can fit another in the hall too if I move stuff around.

Mostly just been playing DF and die2nite really…

This fort, I have more goals than the last one. Each migrant wave will get a theme and each dwarf will get a name. Every dwarf gets a bedroom and couples get a suite. At the start of year five all the founders will retire, if the lava isn’t too far down I want to work out a pump-stack. I want to have a proper military, one that can actually see off small groups of enemies, not just two or three dwarves who hang around until they get massacred.

New name, new home. I don’t know what I did to deserve this, I was hardly even involved. Either way I’ve been exiled, given an axe and sent a hundred miles into the middle of nowhere with a group of known idiots. “Use your axe” I was told, who knows what that means. Now we’ve set down in the middle of some forest and they’re talking about actually digging out a new “fortress”.

This won’t last long… At least I can carve us out some trade goods while they piss around, maybe by the time we hit the next village we’ll actually be able to trade for some booze.

Several days later

The nice soft sand they were digging into quickly turned into rock. I told them to give it up but then they found some rubbishy little gems and insisted they keep going.

Magpies, the lot of them. I’m never gonna get out of here. They insist this mountain is built of Jet, and that’s a good thing, but all I see is stones. Give me a good bit of wood any day.

557, Mid Spring.

Well they’ve gotten further than I thought they would, now they’re talking about making some elaborate staircase, something about a homage or tradition, I wasn’t really listening. I started carving us some nice beds, I’m tired of sleeping on the ground.
I put them in the hole they’ve dug along with the food, we’ll be cold, but at least we’ll be finally dry.

557, Late Spring

They started on their little stairwell, an ugly thing with levels and confusion, it doesn’t look efficient at all. They ooed and ahhed over ever silly little gem they found, but said nothing when they hit gold. It intersects with the stairwell on nine different levels, and that’s just a straight shaft downwards, who knows what we’d find if we branched out.

If we’re staying here then I want a bed with gold inlay. They can stick some of their silly little gems to it as well if they like.

Mid Dumber. Some migrants have arrived, more outcasts or just unlucky? Judging by their names I’ll assume they’re outcasts.

Monday – Good miner, good trader, not good at much else.
Tuesday – This guy’s in charge of our food, butcher, grower and cook.
Wednesday – That would be me! Good carpenter, woodcutter and axedwarf.
Thursday – Good miner, good metal crafter. Not much of a conversationalist.
Friday – Good brewer and awful fisherman. Good thing, I hate fish…
Saturday – This guy worries me a little, he likes carving bones, gems and stone, in that order.
Sunday – Reasonable engraver and stone worker.

January – Terrible miner, good at finding herbs though. Didn’t think those professions would go together.
February – Metal crafter and bone carver.
March – Good brewer but also a good fighter, once they dig me some barracks he’s in my squad.
April – Fisherdwarf, another bone carver.
May – Fish Cleaner, reasonable fighter.
June – Thresher and soap maker, but she says she wants to raise bees.
July – Cheese maker. That’s it.
August – Cheese maker too.

Gonna start a new one and be more diligent with setting up a military this time. Also I hope I find magma closer to the surface…

I’m really bad at getting dwarves organized, it’s not rare to see 50 idle and I never really did get the bedrooms sorted out. In the next fort I’ll do proper profession names and more organized workshops, and I think I’ll do the thing somebody said a few posts up with giving military dwarves proper professions.